Sorry to load up on the CrunchDeals today but, hey, it’s basically holiday shopping season, right? Late October? Sheesh. Anyhoo, Amazon has the HP 2133 Mini-Note – the one with the nice keyboard and above-average build quality – for $299.

Here’s what you get: VIA C7-M CPU at 1GHz, 512MB of RAM, 4GB solid state hard drive, 8.9-inch display at 1280×768, 92% of full-size keyboard, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for an operating system.

HP 2133 Mini-Note [Amazon.com via Mobility Today]

Possibly in response to Acer’s recent price-lowering extravaganza, HP has cut prices on its flagship netbook, the Mini-Note. While HP’s lowest price of $499 is still a long way from Acer’s $329, with any luck we might be witnessing the beginning of an industry-wide price war should ASUS, MSI, and other netbook manufacturers start to feel the heat from Acer. HP’s price cuts are good until the end of August, while Acer’s are permanent. It’ll be interesting to see if HP pops prices all the way back up to previous levels or perhaps meets somewhere in the middle.

HP 2133 Mini-Note Models [HP.com via Infoworld]

That HP Mini Note? Yeah, it’ll be available with Windows XP, the preferred Windows OS of, oh, I don’t know, pretty much everyone I’ve spoken with.

Some sleuthing by Laptop mag turned up the goods, discovering that XP will be available as a pre-configured option by mid-May. That’s just one month from now, and a few weeks after the Vista and Linux models launch.

Remember the Google gag where “miserable failure” linked to George W. Bush’s bio? Might want to amended that so Vista shows up instead. I’ve never seen such vitriol directed at an OS.

HP‘s the latest computer maker to jump on the netbook bandwagon. (Netbooks, of course, are those super small laptops only good for things like surfing the Web and checking e-mail. They’ll be big in the cash-strapped education market.) Its Mini-Note, which should go on sale later this month, is powered by one of those Via processors we’ve been hearing a little about lately.

If this mini-computer sounds like the Eee PC, that’s because they’ll be competing for the hearts and minds of the same people. Yup, they’re direct competitors.

The Mini-Note, which has an 8.9-inch screen and weighs something like 3 pounds (or less!), can be configured either with Linux, which you may be familiar with, and Vista. I guess if you want to torture your students you’d get the Vista model.

In looking at that artsy photo, I automatically get the sense that the Mini-Note (and others like it, I suppose) would do quite well in a college setting. Taking notes, browsing the Web, etc. I don’t need a MacBook Pro to do that, no sir.